Movistar racer Andrey Amador is recovering in a hospital after muggers beat and left him unconscious in a Costa Rica riverbed over the weekend in an apparent robbery of his new Pinarello Dogma 60.1s bicycle.

Amador, 24, was on his final training ride of 2010 when thugs poured out of two passing vehicles near the Costa Rican capital of San José. They stole his bike and beat him so severely he was left unconscious for six hours in a riverbed alongside the roadway.

“They left him unconscious and very likely beat him some more. He was around six hours unconscious along a river and when he woke up, it was already late in the afternoon, and he called us and we went to pick him up,” recounted Iván Amador, the cyclist’s older brother, in a Movistar team release. “It appeared that he only had cuts and bruises, but the next morning he started to vomit and we had to take him to the hospital.”

Amador said his brother remains in a San José hospital where he is being treated for various injuries, including contusions to his lungs that make breathing difficult as well as paralysis of one of his kidneys due to the severity of the beating.

Amador, who has raced the past two seasons with Caisse d’Epargne, was set to race in the Tour de San Luís later this month in Argentina. It’s not sure how long he will be sidelined.

The thieves were likely targeting Amador’s brand-new blue and green Pinarello Dogma 60.1s bike that was handed out to Movistar riders at a team camp in Spain ahead of Christmas. The bike features the new electric Campagnolo group, so it could be quite easy to track the thieves if they try to sell such a unique bicycle on the open market.

Andrew Hood

Andrew Hood cut his journalistic teeth at Colorado dailies before the web boom opened the door to European cycling in the mid-1990s. Hood has covered every Tour de France since 1996 and has been VeloNews' European correspondent since 2002.